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How American Evangelicals Are NOT Following New Testament Christianity
Christian Post ^ | 12/08/2014 | John Lomperis

Posted on 12/08/2014 9:34:43 AM PST by SeekAndFind

Much more than a single article could be written detailing all the ways in which American evangelical Protestantism looks very different from the early church. Certainly not all of the developments in our external circumstances or internal practices have been for the worse.

But one key way in which American evangelicals have not been closely hewing to the faithful biblical example of our spiritual forefathers and foremothers is in the basic attitude and response we often have towards what to do about blatant unfaithfulness within the church itself.

People often romantically long for the purity of "the New Testament church." But in the New Testament I read, I see a church with some really serious problems.

In the Revelation to John, we see Jesus Christ not giving up on but still loving certain churches, calling them to Scriptural holiness, even when the Ephesian church had forsaken its first love, the church in Smyrna included people devoted to false teaching and sexual immorality, the church in Thyatira tolerated Satanic teaching and a woman leading others into sexual immorality, the church in Sardis was spiritually dead, and the church in Laodicea had not yet repented of being so infamously lukewarm.

Members of the church in Rome were harshly judging and being stumbling blocks for each other. The very first "reconciling congregation" in church history, which took an "open and affirming" stance towards sexual sin, was the one in Corinth, which also included members with a scandalously nasty habit of dragging each other to court. The Galatian church was being led to follow a false Gospel, and heard from Paul about his own experiences elsewhere with "false brothers" who "had infiltrated our ranks." To the Philippian church, Paul noted that some preachers of Christ were driven by insincere motives of selfish ambition and jealousy. The Colossian church was plagued by a heretical false teachings that mixed in elements from non-Christian belief systems and struck at the very heart of the Gospel. The Thessalonian church had its own struggles with practice, needing to be warned against sexual immorality and then having problems with sinful, mooching laziness. The churches in Crete, overseen by Titus, had within them a disruptive faction who were spreading false teaching, and who had become part of the church despite not even knowing God. The church folk who first received the epistle of James appear to have had an ugly habit of treating rich people better than poor people. Peter's second letter strongly warns against the inevitable problem of churches being infiltrated by dangerous false teachers. The recipients of John's epistles were apparently in churches in which people were evidently believing the claims of spirits and false prophets who were not from God, there had been the spread of false teachings so dangerous that they endangered Christians' eternal salvation, and there was even a corrupt man in a church leadership position who was slandering faithful Christians and abusing his power to put some faithful Christians out of the church. Finally, Jude's little epistle is worth taking a moment to read in its entirety. He was addressing a church into which false teachers had "secretly slipped in," people who "pervert[ed] the grace of our God into a license for immorality." Sound familiar?

I fear that for too many American Protestants, their first reaction if they heard of a church experiencing even one of these problems would be "if something like that was going on in my church, I would just leave and go to another church – even if that meant abandoning a faithful local congregation because of something happening in the wider denomination!"

This is a profoundly unbiblical mindset. The New Testament presents us with a number of responses to such church problems: Teaching that explicitly refutes false beliefs. Church discipline. Patient endurance. "Contending for the faith" – and note that when Jude gave that command, he was talking about fighting unfaithfulness within the church itself! Warning about the ultimate eternal consequences of persistent unfaithfulness. Waiting for eventual justice for enemies of the Gospel. Even rejoicing over some good preaching by very corrupt individuals!

But what I do not see in Scripture is this idea that when the false teachers have gained a small foothold in or even overwhelmed a local church, we have any right to just surrender everything to them, give them full, unchallenged leadership over the local flock, just run away and quit, and maybe try to rebuild everything from scratch somewhere down the road.

As long as God sustains our ministry, the Institute on Religion and Democracy is committed to contending for the faith once delivered, rather than surrendering the church to those who would hijack it for lesser agendas.

- John Lomperis is IRD's United Methodist Director. He earned his bachelor's degree in Religious Studies from the University of Chicago, and has an M.Div from Harvard University.


TOPICS: Current Events; Evangelical Christian; Religion & Culture; Theology
KEYWORDS: christians; evangelicals; newtestament; scripture
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1 posted on 12/08/2014 9:34:43 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

A United Methodist pastor wrote this? Is he unaware of the stands taken by the United Methodists?

Well, this article is comforting, in a way. The fact is that the world and the church have been at war since the beginning of time so the current evils are nothing new - just something we must fight during our period of conscription. We get called home, new ranks get called up, and we fight, until the last battle -

which we win.


2 posted on 12/08/2014 9:38:46 AM PST by Persevero (Come on 2016)
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To: SeekAndFind

“But what I do not see in Scripture is this idea that when the false teachers have gained a small foothold in or even overwhelmed a local church, we have any right to just surrender everything to them, give them full, unchallenged leadership over the local flock, just run away and quit, and maybe try to rebuild everything from scratch somewhere down the road. “

He needs to read more...

“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?

And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord...”


3 posted on 12/08/2014 9:41:20 AM PST by PetroniusMaximus
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To: SeekAndFind
Even rejoicing over some good preaching by very corrupt individuals!

AAAAARRGH!

4 posted on 12/08/2014 9:43:49 AM PST by cornelis
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To: SeekAndFind
If I had to walk to church, I might value 'the closest one' a bit higher...
5 posted on 12/08/2014 9:45:43 AM PST by Mr Rogers
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To: SeekAndFind

Stay put, infidels! We are the ordained.


6 posted on 12/08/2014 9:52:42 AM PST by cornelis
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To: SeekAndFind
" the church in Smyrna included people devoted to false teaching and sexual immorality"

This author doesn't know what he's talking about. The church at Smyrna was one of only two of the 7 churches of Revelation that Christ had nothing bad to say about. Christ never accused the church in Smyrna of "false teaching" or "sexual immorality".

7 posted on 12/08/2014 10:04:51 AM PST by circlecity
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To: SeekAndFind

Sounds like a fund-raising stump speech by a huckster who can have multiple college degrees and still write stupidly.


8 posted on 12/08/2014 10:19:32 AM PST by Resettozero
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To: SeekAndFind

This was a bad find. Why not post something good, like from ISI authors?


9 posted on 12/08/2014 10:25:07 AM PST by cornelis
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To: SeekAndFind

That’s what I love about being a Baptist. If the local church fails, the members can leave. If the denomination fails, the churches can leave.

No need to stay and let the tithes and offerings be used for imoorality.


10 posted on 12/08/2014 10:26:33 AM PST by chesley (Obama -- Muslim or dhimmi? And does it matter?)
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To: cornelis

RE: Why not post something good, like from ISI authors?

What is ISI?


11 posted on 12/08/2014 10:30:23 AM PST by SeekAndFind (If at first you don't succeed, put it out for beta test.)
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To: circlecity

Good catch.


12 posted on 12/08/2014 10:30:32 AM PST by EternalVigilance
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To: Persevero; Salvation; P-Marlowe; AppyPappy

John Lomperis is a good Christian man and a Methodist. He is also only partially right in this essay.

His position is that Christians are not to depart unfaithful churches, and his examples are early bodies of believers who had issues within their churches but who were also not told to leave those churches by the apostles. He recommends fighting for one’s church.

First, there’s a huge historical gap that renders comparisons between local churches in the bible with “denominations” of our day almost totally irrelevant. Would the advice have been different if Corinth had had thousands of churches instead of just one? Because, really, what is a Methodist evangelical in terms of distinction from an Evangelical Free evangelical? Not very much. It just might be a good thing for a sexually rampant Methodist local church to close its doors if everyone walked and stuck their finger in that bishop’s eye. “You can go only so far, bishop, but now you can do so with an empty building.”

Second, Lomperis ignores that Christ, Himself, tells the Revelation church at Ephesus that it’s in danger of losing it’s candlestick. What’s that mean? It means it is officially losing its reason for being. (You don’t light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick.) Christ takes away its right to be one His sources of light. Period. He closes the doors.

How do the people know? One, they sense it. Two, they see no fruit. Three, they know that the teachings are now heretical.

Third, there are subtle ways to maintain a congregation and rid oneself of a denomination if buildings and endowments are not important. A group could just depart as a group and still be THAT church.

Finally, a dissenting movement could officially separate from a denomination and form a new denomination. Lastly, a dissenting movement could persuade a denomination to endorse separate self-directing entities under a same corporate head that provides only paperwork facilitation to the entities under its banner.

I endorse denominational splits when a denomination has lost its candlestick. The Episcopalians (ecusa?) clearly have no reason to exist as a Christian denomination. Nor do the Unitarians for a long time now. The PCUSA and the ELCA are almost there. The UMC has a fighting chance to pull this out of the fire if their African churches are not suborned in some way.

Lomperis is a faithful man. He has missed a few things, though, in my view. If some must leave a denomination, he is not leaving the “Church” if he is simply finding a far more faithful body of believers.


13 posted on 12/08/2014 10:32:21 AM PST by xzins ( Retired Army Chaplain and Proud of It! Those who truly support our troops pray for victory!)
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To: xzins

The issue is this question: Why are we sending missionaries to start churches in foreign lands if we won’t even try to save the churches here?


14 posted on 12/08/2014 10:35:07 AM PST by AppyPappy (If you are not part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem.)
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To: Persevero
A United Methodist pastor wrote this? Is he unaware of the stands taken by the United Methodists?

The irony is too rich. The UMC is almost if not completely apostate at this point.

15 posted on 12/08/2014 10:35:37 AM PST by Alex Murphy ("the defacto Leader of the FR Calvinist Protestant Brigades")
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To: AppyPappy

We have missionaries from Africa coming to the US and Western Europe.

And you have a point. We desperately need to reach our neighbors, as much as we need to preach to Africa.


16 posted on 12/08/2014 10:41:32 AM PST by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: SeekAndFind
Intercollegiate Studies Institute: Educating for Liberty. They publish Lawler and Zmirak and are great for college-age students. isi.org.

It's easy to post things that appall--god knows there's a lot that sort to post--harder to promote the good. But the good is what I'd want to seek to find. So as a matter of principle, if I have a microphone, I should use it for our message. Otherwise it's sort of like running for (R) by campaigning for a (D): "Hi, I'm your Republican Rep running for re-election. Our pastor says you should accept Obamacare!"

17 posted on 12/08/2014 10:42:11 AM PST by cornelis
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To: SeekAndFind

All of the New Testament writings about these problems were directed to local churches while also being shared with all of the churches in order for them to learn as well.

Today’s denomination are based on an anti-Biblical idea of hierarchical authority structures in which local churches are controlled by church leaders who operate at some remote location. I believe Methodist churches operate this way.

So he is giving bad counsel not to leave denominations that turn against God. Start by being part of a local church that uses the Bible as the final authority for all disputes. If they abandon the Bible, go somewhere that clings to it.


18 posted on 12/08/2014 10:43:32 AM PST by unlearner (You will never come to know that which you do not know until you first know that you do not know it.)
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To: Alex Murphy

It is not ‘almost if not completely apostate’.

It’s about 60% believer and 40% apostate.


19 posted on 12/08/2014 10:43:46 AM PST by xzins ( Retired Army Chaplain and Proud of It! Those who truly support our troops pray for victory!)
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To: SeekAndFind

In other words. Stay with our church regardless of what we are teaching and representing and keep those donations coming. His church and others within the Protestant ranks have become hardly recognizable as a Christian Church.

Leave those churches!!! There are faithful Christian Churches out there.


20 posted on 12/08/2014 10:43:57 AM PST by dirtymac
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